Please check following video https://youtube.com/shorts/XYtH8Bv4CM0?feature=share and guide me, if this is best it can be. From the looks of it with with Amplipi Spotify combo the panel is weird volume control. Although its outside of focus of this forum, I would be interested to see if I can flash it with something geared towards only Spotify. Because we really don’t use anything else.
UPDATE: I would be happy if the panel shows what the website of Amplipi shows - the controls and album art plus volume control per (active) zone. Also stretch goal would be make one HW button to mute and second to let Spotify know to un-pause whatever was playing last.
I haven’t had a chance to plug in my dev wallpanel to replicate these issues yet, but my first thought is that you could be running up against our source limitation:
The wall panel UI was first built to match our web UI, which was source-centric at the time (see above, 1-4 are the available sources that you’d then select before playing a stream) but a few years ago we did a 100% rebuild of our web UI to make it stream-centric while completely hiding sources and we haven’t had the chance to complete and publish the same makeover for the wallpanel yet.
With that minor history lesson out of the way, I’d suggest trying to use that source dropdown to see if you can select the source that has spotify running, that could alleviate some of your issues.
Further, those two physical buttons do have a purpose. In AC units the wallpanels are built to replace your light switches, those buttons are switches in button form. In POE units and AC units where you only need one button for the switching, those buttons are also capable of integrating into an MQTT setup so you can have something like Home Assistant listen for button press events to then do something around the house for you, muting the room or changing the play/pause state are two tasks that are entirely doable but would be a DIY project on your end as making an update to that extent will likely eliminate many other user setups.
Just to summarize this long post:
Try using that select source dropdown to see if that helps you
Your interest in having the wallpanel match the website is shared and is on the docket
Those physical buttons are capable of doing what you want them to with some setup on your end
That sounds great. I’ve been a fairly long time user of the AmpliPi. I initially bought in during the crowdfunding period. I have just the single unit. I am about to begin building a new house and was about to order an expansion to get up to the 12 zones I intend on having. I then discovered the in wall controller and was intending on getting one for each room. I bought one to test out and was super disappointed. After reading this, I’ve got hope that it will play out for me. I guess the question is how long will it take? I kind of need to decide SOON if I’m going to build out jacks to the locations that I would put these.
On your wallpanel navigate to MQTT settings. (gear icon->advanced->MQTT) and enter the your MQTT broker’s ip address, a room name, and if necessary, a username and password for your broker.
But I dont see anything related to MQTT. I only see Update/Connection/Advanced which none of is usfeul for mqqt. How can I setup those 2 buttons at the bottom of the panel?
@amplipi could you please elaborate for the NSPanel which runs your firmware how do configure those switches for custom Home Assistant integration (MQTT auth and details about topic/channel) ?
I’ll have to apologize, I misspoke when I said those buttons are capable of MQTT. They are capable of that, but our current factory-shipped software doesn’t support it.
The repo you linked to is our old wallpanel software. That was written in microPython, a language that is similar to what flagship AmpliPi is written in which made it easier to work on, but also a language that isn’t very responsible with system resources which caused many issues with memory overflow errors.
Our new version of the wall panel is written in C for more direct memory control, and is currently closed source. It seems we haven’t yet ported 100% of old functionality over in favor of getting a more stable product out, MQTT is on the to-do list yet and will be top of the list after we complete our OS upgrade.
Since you’re flashing NSPanels you can attempt to flash a panel with that old code, just note that if you do so you may run into that memory overflow error I mentioned and find yourself in need of using a paperclip or push pin to hit the reset button, located in the hole in the center of the bottom of the unit on occasion.
Is there any timeline for the OS upgrade or rough estimate, so I have idea when the work on the wall panel may commence? Also would you consider open sourcing the C codebase? I might contribute
